I interviewed A Simple Silence director Craig Quintero at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below.
Here’s his artist’s statement:
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Rough Transcript
[00:00:05.438] Kent Bye: The Voices of VR Podcast. Hello, my name is Kent Bye, and welcome to the Voices of VR Podcast. It's a podcast that looks at the structures and forms of immersive storytelling in the future of spatial computing. You can support the podcast at patreon.com slash voicesofvr. So continuing my series of looking at different immersive storytelling projects from Venice Immersive 2024 to Today's episode is with a project called A Simple Silence, which is the third in a triptych by Craig Contero that is kind of this fusion of immersive theater, one-on-one encounters, and 360 video. So in each of these different projects, he tries to prefer your expectations. And so it's kind of a series of different encounters with these different actors and these different situations and contexts. And it's honestly kind of difficult to describe. There's a kind of a visual poetry to it and there's a a number of different spatial transformations that end up happening throughout the context of these pieces but at the end of it it's trying to pervert your expectations for what you even expect so that's what we're coming on today's episode of the vr podcast so this interview with craig happened on thursday august 29th 2024 so with that let's go ahead and dive right in
[00:01:17.509] Craig Quintero: My name is Craig Quintero. I'm the Artistic Director of Riverbed Theatre. And we formed in Taiwan in 1998, so 26 years of theatre. And we started doing VR three years ago with All the Remains, which premiered in Venice. And then last year, Over the Rainbow, that premiered at Tribeca and then was shown here. And then we have our third and final piece of this trilogy, A Simple Silence. And so we've been working from theatre to 360 VR, and it's been an exciting change in process.
[00:01:48.086] Kent Bye: Great. Maybe you could give a bit more context as to your background and your journey into this space.
[00:01:52.510] Craig Quintero: Yeah. So I started off. So my name is Craig. I was born in America and I started had a very traditional American education. And in college, I started being exposed to experimental theater and immersive theater, the likes of Robert Wilson and Jerzy Grotowski and R.R. these people were really sort of pushing what were the parameters of what we can create in a theatrical experience. Not just taking a play and putting it on stage, but having this different encounter. And so at that early stage, I really was sort of interested in, well, how do we create... experiences for the audience and something that can transport them. And so I ended up going to Taiwan to study Chinese opera. And then while I was there, I started really doing research on Taiwanese experimental theater and its relationship to political change. And all of this led to forming a company in Taiwan, as I mentioned, 26 years ago. And, you know, really our own artwork, because I was talking about how these Wilson, Artaud, Grotowski, these people influenced me. It was like, well, how do we construct our own experiences now in response to our environment and in response to these current times? And so we've done small scale pieces in theaters. We've done large performances a couple of years ago for 1500 audience members. And each of the pieces, it's not really starting with a main point or this is a storyline, but it's really about creating an experience, an encounter. And again, with VR, it's been this process of how do we embrace this medium that has particular elements that we can sort of play with and the things that we're pushing against.
[00:03:27.765] Kent Bye: Yeah. And so, you know, as you're talking about your own journey into this space, I'm just reminded of like my own entry point into this space was all the way back in October of 2011 when Punch Drunk was doing Sleep No More in New York City. I happened to go to a conference there and work and then it opened earlier in that spring. But yeah, just looking at the history, I know that Punch Drunk and a lot of kind of immersive theater strands were coming out of the United Kingdom and I don't know if there's an authoritative history of immersive theater, but from your strands, it sounds like a lot of the practice that you've been doing with Riverbed Theater has been a form of immersive theater. I don't know if there's the proscenium stage and then there's the kind of immersive nature. And so how do you think about the people that really inspired you? Where do they fit within this overall history of immersive theater?
[00:04:13.720] Craig Quintero: Yeah, so I mentioned a couple of the big directors who I did research on when I was an undergraduate, but there's probably the primary person who influenced me the most in the space that influenced me the most. In Boston, there is a small experimental theater venue called Mobius. And when I went to Tufts University for undergraduate, I really... had not seen performance art. I had not been to see experimental theater. I didn't really know what that was. And what was amazing about Mobius is that every, if you went there every weekend, each week would be a different experiment. So some would be John Cage, a chance process where they'd be rolling dice or like choosing cards and then doing performances based on that. There were promenade performances where we started in the theater, and then we went up an elevator, and then we were climbing on the rooftop and going down stairway. It was this journey. And each piece was like this radically different approach to what theater could be. And so no longer were we just sitting in an auditorium looking at a proscenium stage, but each piece was an encounter. And you never knew what was going to happen. And I think that process of destabilizing the audience was something that, as a young person, I really embraced. And this idea of there not being the fourth wall, of there being this direct encounter, direct engagement, a lot of their works fully embraced all of the senses, so smell or taste or touch. And so it was an amazing laboratory as a spectator to sort of suddenly, you're in the experiment. And so through that, you know, and I still I can go and enjoy a musical and I can still like a traditional play play. But there's something about these encounters where there's more of a direct engagement, which I find more rewarding, that I find that enables something different to happen. That's not just me as an audience in darkness being a spectator to this event and so this idea of engagement this idea of spatial transformation of we've talked before so we have a history of conversations here and so i don't want to repeat too much of what i said before but you know of getting lost in the work And so every time I went to Mobius on a Friday or Saturday night, you know, having no sense of expectation. And it's an amazing gift to enable the audience to step into this place of the unknown.
[00:06:24.588] Kent Bye: Yeah, that getting lost is a really interesting way of putting it because there's a bit of an interesting dilemma that I found myself in covering your pieces before where it's like, I feel like there's an underlying current of expectations, perverting expectations, sending me on a path of the unknown liminal space that it puts me into this altered space of consciousness. And then by the end of it, it would be difficult for me to actually recount, here's what happened beat by beat. And so then when I do an interview, then it's like... So in the last couple, I think, at least the last couple, with Over the Rainbow as well as with A Simple Silence, that I had the ability to go back and watch it again. And I don't know if by watching it again is actually like... against the point of getting lost and disoriented because it's putting me into this space of being lost, but also kind of losing the ability to have language to describe it, which for me is terrifying because I want to be able to precisely describe everything I'm experiencing, but it feels like these kind of associative links that are sending me into this kind of liminal space that is maybe the point of it all.
[00:07:34.485] Craig Quintero: Yeah, I'll respond to a couple of things you just said there. I mean, I love that it's hard to sort of put into words because, again, I think so many of our most intense emotions, our most intense experiences, I mean, that is it. It doesn't need to be translated into language. And so ideally, I mean, I love when someone who just saw like a simple science, they take off their headset and there's this moment of just... pause or you can look and they're trying to process or they're coming back to like they were somewhere else and then bam they need to come back to I'm sitting here and I'm in Venice and there are all these people walking by and I've got to go see something else but they've gone somewhere else and I think the ability like in 12 minutes to take the audience to a space they've never been before and probably will never be back to again, I think is richly rewarding in terms of being able to watch again. But I do like that. I mean, to be honest, having directed these pieces, I've watched them many times and the editing process. And we were just showing Over the Rainbow at Bifan this summer. And so I hadn't watched it for quite a while. And so I was like, oh, I'm going to watch it again. And it was really things that were surprising still to me. I knew what was going to happen. But somehow, it's almost like hypnosis, that you're sort of in this entranced state where, yeah, again, lose yourself. Or you're in this altered state where these things are slowly evolving. And these shifts and changes, even though I know what's going to happen ahead of me, it's still surprising. And I think that because it's fighting against linear logic or it's fighting against a stability of meaning, that it enables those moments of discovery to occur more than once.
[00:09:16.940] Kent Bye: It's like cracking those boundaries of expectations that puts you in that state of awe and wonder because you don't know quite what to expect. And it's beyond the ability to fully understand or comprehend. But it's like undeniable because it's happening. And I feel like with VR, especially in the simple silence, you're starting to... at least more than i remember start to transform the spaces like when i re-watched it i was surprised i was like oh it looks like there's only like four cuts or four scenes here that are unfolding but that feels like a lot more expansive because within each of those scenes are kind of like a mini moment that could be even like four chapters within it so like it's kind of like a a fractal of like 16 different moments that transform in a way that's unexpected or surprising. And so when I rewatched it this time, I felt like, oh, wow, this is actually like doing a lot of like spatial modulation in a way that is really pushing the edge of change blindness or other kind of like you don't usually see walls moving around and have people hiding under this or that, or things that are there that are happening that are not expecting. So yeah, I'd love to hear any elaboration on that.
[00:10:28.260] Craig Quintero: Yeah, so I think, well, a couple of responses. One in terms of a technical response, because a lot of, as you mentioned, in a simple silence, it's 12 minutes long, and there's only four sequences. But for one sequence, there's a lot of spatial transformations. And so in shooting it, because it's a one take, and so there's like well this has to move and then this has to be the exact timing and then this lighting transition i mean there's so many moving pieces that it's it's it's very difficult for the performers and it's difficult for the tech team i mean we have the people that are building it are this fantastic scenic artists, James and Xiu Ling worked on the set for this simple silence. But all the other people backstage are primarily college students who've never studied or done theater or film before. And through the course of the four or five weeks when we're building a set, they're learning how to use a screw gun and how to use a pneumatic stapler and how to do all this. And they're really creating the piece and then suddenly they're backstage operating it. And so it's so many moving pieces. But I love that. I love the handmade quality of it. And so I think something that's been difficult for us is, well, how do we translate the materiality of our live theatrical experiences into virtual reality? How do we... make that handmade quality still be a sustained element that we can incorporate into the piece and so when we're shooting like for the final sequence we probably ended up shooting that thing like 13 or 14 times because it'd be going so great but then the tree was put a little bit at a slightly different angle and so the light didn't hit it right okay well it's got to now rewind and let's do the whole thing again and so it's a really the precision of the work the curation of each moment you know is very intentional It's really trying to give the audience a fully realized work of art that's painting and sculpture and the human body and sound. But it's not just a painting on the wall. I mean, it's all around you. And so we have to care to, you know, that fully immersive environment. And so it's really demanding for the team that's putting it together, but hopefully rewarding for the audience because of that.
[00:12:38.988] Kent Bye: Yeah, and were your other two pieces, did it have as many of those spatial transformations that are in this? Or was this unique in the way that you were taking that idea of spatial transformation to the next level?
[00:12:49.591] Craig Quintero: I think it's sort of been a common thematic thread in All the Remains and Over the Rainbow. And I really like this idea of, I think we've talked before about animism. And so I think that this idea that a tree has a spirit or a rock has a spirit or that the space around us is alive. Samuel Beckett had this quote where he said, the world is feeding. And I like this idea that the world is consuming or the world is in motion, the world is around us and engaging with us. And so a lot of traditional theater shows, they'll have a set and they'll have backdrops and it's normally something that's behind the actors and they're performing in front of it, but it's just a background. And for our work, it really is to give the space life, that the space becomes a dynamic character and that space's relationship to the actors is a really fundamental part of it. And I think that that's not true just in our work and in art, but I mean, in life. For the minor things of like here in Venice, it's really hot. And so when we go outside, we have a physiological change. And so the heat on our skin and sweat and suddenly that triggers different emotions. And so without anything really narratively happening through our body, we're having a different encounter because of the environmental shift temperature. And so I think in space, in terms of our work as well, how do we enable the space to be equally dynamic where it's not a passive background, but it is a character. It is that dynamic thing that's pushing the action forward. And so if the space doesn't change, then the scene doesn't change and we don't get to the next moment.
[00:14:24.264] Kent Bye: Gotcha. Okay. That all makes sense. And so I know in previous discussions, you've talked about how it's almost improv iterative process of kind of figuring out the next moment. You kind of work up to that point and experiment a little bit. And so it's not like you sit down and write a script, but more of a... iterative, collaborative process where you're working with these different actors to see what would be the next step. And so this is the third in a trilogy. And so did you do the same type of process where you completed one and then see what that would take you to the next one? Or did you have a sense of how this would all fit together? Because I think you've been calling this a trilogy for a long time. So I think by the time you were showing All That Remains, I think you had already shot Over the Rainbow. And so you had already... had on this trajectory that you were on this track but yeah I'm just curious to hear about the trilogy nature of these three pieces.
[00:15:17.638] Craig Quintero: Yeah so I think that when we started the piece I did have this idea of wanting it to be a triptych or a trilogy the same way that I really love in Francis Bacon's paintings that sometimes you'll have a single work but oftentimes it's just three paintings in relationship to each other and so with these works and and so again each of those paintings has a a very similar stylistic pattern, sort of like Francis Bacon. And so when you're looking at it, you immediately identify it. But each one is saying something slightly differently, or the composition where you're surrounded by or embraced by these works. And so in developing A Simple Silence, which was the final chapter, we wanted it to be a distinctive work of art that could stand on its own. But we also wanted to tie some of the threads together. And so there's some details. If someone sees the end of Over the Rainbow, and there's a final moment where the woman ascends, And in the second scene, in a simple silence, the same woman wearing the same costume magically appears in a different direction. And so you start to like, oh, what did she after this? Then she comes back here. And so there's some of these elements, some of like the curtains. So there's some of the materials, there's some of the costuming and the same actors. And so I think stylistically, there's not a linear narrative that's propelling the piece forward. But we're seeing the same two bodies in these different encounters. And I think that that's, you know, when we think about, you know, parallel universes or multiple realities, that these two bodies have been put in these different contexts. And then how do they respond to that? And so in a way, it's almost like an experiment to, you know, for each of us, like, how would we respond if we were suddenly placed, you know, here we are in Venice or suddenly we're now in Taipei or suddenly in the same series of events could happen. or a different series of events could happen, but how would that change or transport our own behavior or sort of that journey that we would go on?
[00:17:10.222] Kent Bye: I remember in the previous discussion about All That Remains, there was a certain moment where you were giving specific directions, where you were having the actors hold two contradictory or incommensurate things in their mind and their body at the same time to create this kind of internal tension. And so I'm wondering if you continued to have that type of direction where you're having the actors try to do things on a little bit more subtle way or there's always this kind of like unique gaze that the actors have that kind of this breaking of the fourth wall where you feel like you're invited in or you become a part of the piece but there's also this kind of like expression or gestures that are sometimes hard to place because you know there's a lot of things that are going on at the same time so i'd love to hear you elaborate on that
[00:17:57.423] Craig Quintero: Yeah, I think that oftentimes, because if you're performing a drama and someone is sick and you're there and you're tending to them, there's a very specific way that you would play that character because you're trying to communicate just that. Or if someone dies and you're expressing grief, then there's a way you express that. And I think in our work that we're trying to complicate the moments. So it isn't just a moment of grief or it isn't just a moment of joy. It's that simultaneously all of these things can occur. And so like in the final moment of a simple silence where the actress approaches the audience and then there's this moment of connection, it was a very similar direction of, you know, at times it would look like her, she would be like, and we can sort of like, okay, well, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. But also in this moment, if it's an ending, it's also a beginning or in this moment, if it's life, it's also death or that the ability to have multiple things happening. And I think if we can complicate that, then it enables the audience when they're watching the work to have multiple points of entry. And it's not just like, oh, she's sad or she's happy, but it's more through seeing her I'm sad or I'm happy. So it's removing the locus from us caring about her and her emotions. But through her, it's a vehicle through which we can have our own encounter with ourselves.
[00:19:19.887] Kent Bye: And I remember when we were talking in New York City at Tribeca about Over the Rainbow, there's kind of like a bit of narration at the very beginning. And I don't know if it's in All That Remains as well. No, it's also a simple silence where there's a little patter where you're setting a context. I'm not sure if there's much narration even beyond that. It's hard for me to remember the specifics of your pieces, but yeah, I'm wondering if you could elaborate on, for each of these pieces, you're setting the context with what seems to be a little poetic context setting.
[00:19:52.050] Craig Quintero: Yeah, so all that remains didn't have text at the beginning. There was in the second sequence, there was this, and the little girl looked up at her father, and with a big smile she said, One day I'll be you. One day I'll be you. I forgot my own lines. And the father looked down at her with a smile and said, You already are. And then in a simple silence that starts with, And the little girl closed her eyes tightly and said to herself three times, There's no place like home. There's no place like home. There's no place like home. And somehow, yeah, and that starts us on the journey. And so, and at the time as you're hearing this, you're looking at a framed painting of a chalk drawing of a house and sort of this fairly desolate landscape. And as you're hearing this, and that's the context. And I think if we said more, if we gave the next part of the story, it'd be too much. But this idea of no place like home, of home, of family, of returning in The Wizard of Oz, when Dorothy clicks her shoes and says, there's no place like home. And then that's the magic that casts the spell. And the second piece is called Over the Rainbow or Somewhere of the Rainbow. And so there's these little threads, which when I started creating the script for A Simple Silence, I didn't know that that text would be at the beginning. We did it without there being text there. And then as I was watching it, it felt like it wanted to have one other layer. And so we have the painting, we have the environment around the painting. We have the lighting, then there's the spatial transition, but I wanted something else. And that text, and I tried maybe 30 or 40 different iterations, and then that was the thing that stuck. And so it's really thinking about collage, so like Rauschenberg's paintings where you're taking one image from a newspaper and then something from a magazine, and then you start mixing paint into it. or other three-dimensional objects. And it's this placement of these materials which didn't start off that way. And if I were to work on this piece for another two or three months, probably that initial text would change again. And I think that that fluidity of structure, the fluidity of meaning, is really sort of at the heart of this Just For You series.
[00:22:32.054] Kent Bye: And there seemed to be some pretty distinct color palette, like scenes that were flooded with red or white or, you know, you kind of have at the end where things turn to black. And so wondering if you could talk about how the color plays into the juxtaposition from going from one scene to next, because it's such a, I don't know, it feels like it's like a Stanley Kubrick or very well considered aggregation of all these different set design when it comes to the colors, the color palettes.
[00:23:02.374] Craig Quintero: Yeah, so again, and that's something when in terms of creative process, I'll often design the set first and then it can change over the course of the process. But from that set design, we start to rehearse with the actors and without knowing. So, you know, for the first sequence, we build this frame and we have the actors will eventually be performing behind that frame, but not knowing what they're doing. And so we'll try, Monday we'll try this, like, eh, it doesn't work. Tuesday we'll try, eh, Wednesday, and so eventually we'll find something and then we'll start refining that image. And with that, in the same way, like, in terms of the palette, I don't know what it's going to look like in the beginning. And once we start to put bodies in space and think about the evolution of their movements, then the colors start to fit in. And sometimes they change. Like for the first scene of Simple Silence, initially the walls around the frame were going to be this really royal purple. It's almost like the Pope's gowns or sashes or something where there's this regal, holy quality to it. And we tried, and it's like, yeah, I don't know. That's not the right thing. So then we had to go back and repaint it all white, and then we'd try it again. And so the scenic painter's like, Craig, stop changing it. But again, if it doesn't work, then we change, we do something else. And so compositionally, and so there's one sequence in A Simple Silence where it's all white, and just a few elements which are black, and then the performer's body's in this space. And initially we had concept to do something else I was just the base painting that was like the undercoat but then once we had the undercoat we put the actors in there was like the starkness of the light the lack of the other you know sort of characteristics are going to highlight that the old wooden table are going to have like the wooden floorboards it's like no I mean I think this can exist just as like starkness and bodies sort of on a white canvas. And so I think that embracing these moments of surprise or letting the script dictate itself, because I think oftentimes you do start off with a pre-written script, and then the process of building and rehearsing is just, OK, now I'm just going to recreate that. And so the creative process is almost finished before you actually start creating it. And I think in our work, it's really fighting against the finality of that. and really enable, as we rehearse, as we work together as an ensemble, to enable the piece to tell us where it needs to go. And so in the final sequence, in a simple silence, I'm not going to tell the audience, so if you see the piece, you'll be surprised, but initially we had built a large deck, and the lead actor was climbing up on the deck, and then we had a little small house similar to Over in the Rainbow, and then he was able to do sort of like a headstand going into the house and then disappear. So his feet were sticking up out of the house and then sinking into the floor. Conceptually, I thought it was pretty cool. In reality, it was really clunky because we didn't have that much space. And then he kept bumping against his stuff. And it was like, we tried that for four days. And I was like, OK, that's not it. And so three days before we were shooting, we changed half of the final scene. which is kind of stressful, but also, I mean, it needed a change. And I think that letting that happen and letting, again, like the work dictate where it's going, I think is important, like getting out of the way of the work.
[00:26:27.014] Kent Bye: Yeah, it sounds like you do quite a lot of rehearsals before you start filming. And so for each of these four scenes, on average, how many times did you have to shoot it?
[00:26:35.181] Craig Quintero: So we in terms of the rehearsal process we built the set for about two to three weeks and then we had to take it down because someone else was using the space and we put it in storage for like two and a half weeks and then we had to put it back all up again and then we rehearsed for about two and a half weeks and so all together probably about five and a half six weeks and for the actual shoots on the day that we were actually filming it was all in one day and so each scene probably at least seven or eight times yeah and if not i mean maybe 12 or 13 like the final sequence where it had so many moving pieces and so many different timing elements and it's scary because at 11 o'clock we need to be done and if we go over then we have to pay the lighting people more and the set people more and and so it's really sort of time dictates but again i think that that pressure is good i mean it makes us focus and by the end i think we arrived at something we're happy with
[00:27:35.523] Kent Bye: OK. Yeah, it's quite interesting to hear that process because it does take a lot of work to get to that point to put it all together. It sounds like by the time you are shooting, you have a pretty good idea of how things are going to play out.
[00:27:47.686] Craig Quintero: And one thing, like, you haven't asked about this, but I want just to be sure that for listeners, if you're unfamiliar with our work, I mean, something that's really important, like our theater company, Riverbed, which we formed in Taiwan in 1998, I think it being created in Taiwan, I think that really the collaborative nature of the work, that our work with Funique, who shot the piece, a lot of people come out and it's like, Oh my God, how did you have the shadows so dark? Or how did you work with the lighting? I mean, a lot of it is really unique in their post-production. They're able to do high-quality work. The team that we have, Wang Yujun, who's the composer, and has such beautiful music, and Alun, who does the sound engineering, each of the members of the team is an artist. And I think that there's something working in Taiwan and the support that we've been able to get through Taika and the Kaohsiung Film Festival and the Department of Culture is that there's this really strong sense of, collective creation or collaborative work. And so I think for people that are unfamiliar with the Taiwanese art scene or unfamiliar with Riverbed, I strongly encourage you to see other Taiwanese works because there really is something special happening there. And I think that for us to be able to leap into this world, and with Michelle and Liz inviting us into this community. So this is the third year in a row we've been here in Venice. And each time we come out here, it's really remarkable. I was just walking around the outside area, and there's this sense of like a homecoming. It's like, oh, hey, or a college reunion. It's like suddenly there's this community. And so it's really special to be able to engage in this work.
[00:29:14.927] Kent Bye: Have you been able to see some other projects here?
[00:29:18.009] Craig Quintero: Yeah, the first year I was so focused on like, OK, we need to be by our booth and meet people. And now I've probably seen 30 works. And I'm not going to see all of them like you, but I'm doing my best.
[00:29:30.460] Kent Bye: Yeah. And yeah, it feels like that there's a kind of a unique, almost like against the market conditions. It's like a moment out of time here of just the Biennale and other folks that are supporting this exhibition. I feel like there's a part of the way that the medium grows is that it has. a platform like this for innovation to happen and then audience to see it and then to get feedback and then to eventually get to the part where you have some more sustainable distribution paths. But you're kind of in a unique spot because so much of your pieces are so demanding of a artistic context. Like if you just put it up on YouTube, I don't know if it would like translate as well as if it were curated within a museum context and kind of more of like a festival scene here where people are primed by even being in the situation to have some sort of expectations to have an open mind to see where an experience like this could take them into another state of being. And so I'm curious how you navigate this dimension of distribution of this type of work.
[00:30:34.819] Craig Quintero: I often think back to high school, and if there was not a blockbuster video store in my neighborhood, I wouldn't have seen the movies by David Lynch. I wouldn't have been introduced to Cronenberg. I wouldn't have seen Kubrick's work. I wouldn't have seen all of these, and they had their little art film section. And so I think that as VR becomes, hopefully the market is growing and there's more opportunities to share the work, I would love, I don't know if YouTube is the right forum, but that there is an art film section for VR, that there is a place where people who are interested in experimental work or experimental art, that they can go to the site and have this catalog of pieces and suddenly they're seeing something radically different. And so I think that that model, I don't think exists yet, but I think there's a number of different ways distribution companies which have been sort of playing with this idea. So that's really exciting. So on the one hand, that sort of distribution. But on the other, we're starting to work or in the process of working on this piece with PHI Studio in Montreal, where it's going to be a live XR performance, 10 audience members at a time. And with the PHI team is that they're really remarkable about thinking about what is a distribution model that's sustainable. And so for the Infinite is actually sort of financially, you know, their piece where you're going to have 170 people see it in an hour. They can actually make money. It's profitable. And for a smaller piece like this, you know, it's really amazing their level. And the Onassis Foundation is also investing in Taika. You know, like these people are investing in something where it's not going to make money, but to create an experience which is sustainable. So we are able to bring it to multiple countries and share it around the world and to be able to create something where
[00:32:13.274] Kent Bye: again we're able to reach a broader audience and have a more physically engaged encounter and now that you've created three of these 360 video liminal space encounters participatory theater is there a name for this emerging genre of types of work that you create that you self-identify with
[00:32:37.455] Craig Quintero: I've never thought of that. It was actually funny. When we were in college, people would sort of jokingly call them like, oh, that's like Craigism. Because it was just sort of like different than the other stuff that they were seeing. I mean, I'd say that in thinking about what it really is, I mean, I think like surrealist, dream state, or like just an experience. Because I think a lot of... Other works are telling stories and they work really well in that capacity. And I think ideally in our work, it's trying to just create an experience. And so when we were talking earlier about like, well, what stays or what remains and what sort of goes away or these ways that's maybe like later in a dream state, it'll pop back. but the experience like just sort of, you know, in our lives that there's this endless, a lifetime of encounters. And that through VR, how do we create a similar process of experience where through this transitions, through all these events, through the spatial changes, we've gone on this journey and it's become part of our life story.
[00:33:39.045] Kent Bye: Yeah, definitely. I don't know if there's a name for that, but that definitely describes the vibe of what you're creating there. So yeah, I guess as we start to wrap up, I'm curious what you think the ultimate potential of this type of intersection between theater and immersive storytelling and this kind of performance art, experimental performance art might be and what it might be able to enable.
[00:34:03.359] Craig Quintero: Yeah. I mean, I think for us, having completed this trilogy, which, as you just said, is like three very similar 3DOF 360 VR films. And I think it was great to be able to experiment with it three times instead of just like, OK, well, our next piece, we need to do something radically different. And to really feel comfortable with this medium, to still be probing it, but also to sort of have a familiarity. And I think, as I mentioned with Blur, the piece that we're doing now with PHY, it's really thinking about how do we take this individual encounter and then have multiple people experience it? Or how can we have a multi-user experience to still have the same level of intimacy, to have the still level of This whole series, we're calling it the Just For You series. So how can we have for 10 people at the same time, Just For You? And to still have that same level of personal engagement. I think that so much information that we have now is sort of this constant bombardment. There's so much noise. And I think the title of this piece, A Simple Silence. A lot of my friends in Taiwan, they're going on these meditative retreats where they go for 10 days and they don't talk. And it's really sort of to try to reach a moment of stillness. And I think that hopefully through these works, it can provide this meditative space or this transformative space to escape the busyness of everyday life and to just be. And I think that if we can do that maybe more often, that maybe all of that background noise can begin to dissipate and we can find stillness within ourselves.
[00:35:40.602] Kent Bye: Do you have any next steps for Blur?
[00:35:42.825] Craig Quintero: So we've done like three workshops, one at Onassis, two at PHI, and then we're doing our motion capture shoot in October. And then we're having our sort of final tech in January, and then it'll premiere next March 18th at the Taiwan National Theater as part of the Taiwan International Festival of the Arts. And so we already have a final date. when it's going to be done. And so really exciting, really nerve wracking. But I think as an artist, this stepping into the unknown, I think is essential because if we know it, if we've done it, then it's not an experiment and we're just repeating ourselves. And so how do we take the medium and push it forward?
[00:36:22.768] Kent Bye: It's always nice to have a deadline that can be a catalyzing to actually get things all finished. So certainly I think for festivals even like this or even like it's kind of a luxury to have a place where you know it's going to land because that has a fixed context that you know it's going to be. It's like all of your final causation of your intentions and all your motivations are kind of all centered into that point. So yeah, it's very catalyzing to have that into the books. Yeah.
[00:36:48.925] Craig Quintero: Definitely, definitely. Yeah, and I think that for so many artists, Venice really is that focal point. It's like, okay, we need to be done by this date so we can submit, so we can be here and re-engage with the community. And so it's really a fantastic place to gather as an artist.
[00:37:04.854] Kent Bye: Do you have anything else that's left unsaid that you'd like to say to the broader immersive community?
[00:37:09.403] Craig Quintero: We're also showing this work at the Kaohsiung Film Festival, which will be October 17th to 21st. And if you haven't been out to Kaohsiung, I strongly encourage, I think in terms of Asia, it's really emerged as a hub. And they also produce work. They funded Simple Silence. And so there's opportunities to collaborate with Taiwanese artists. And yeah, if you're interested, look up Riverbed Theater, shoot me an email message or Instagram, and then we'll see you in Kaohsiung.
[00:37:40.109] Kent Bye: Awesome. Well, Craig, congratulations for completing this triptych of all that remains over the rainbow in a simple silence that I feel like each of them, my experience of it going into this altered state of consciousness, perverting all my expectations, and in some ways getting a bit lost, which is a bit of a not easy thing to achieve within the medium or just in life in general. So I kind of revel in those moments of feeling like not knowing where I've been or what just happened. So it's a... It's kind of like this alter state dreamlike experience that you've been able to cultivate with my experience with each of these pieces that you put together. So, yeah, thanks again for taking the time again to sit down to help break it all down.
[00:38:20.651] Craig Quintero: Thanks, Ken. It really is always a pleasure to talk with you.
[00:38:23.766] Kent Bye: Thanks again for listening to these episodes from Venice Immersive 2024. And yeah, I am a crowdfunded independent journalist. And so if you enjoy this coverage and find it valuable, then please do consider joining my Patreon at patreon.com slash voices of VR. Thanks for listening.
